Pizza is so good that most of us would be happy to eat it breakfast, lunch and dinner, if it weren't for the fact that it was more than a little unhealthy. But now a scientist has created what he claims is the first nutritionally balanced pizza—and it's OK to eat it three times a day, every day.
The pizza, claims Mike Lean from Glasgow University, UK, contains 30 percent of an adult's guideline amount of vitamins and minerals, as well as a third of the recommended amount of calories, protein and carbohydrate.
Lean, inspired by the poor nutritional quality of most convenience foods, set out to create a pizza that offered the perfect balance of nutrients. As a result, some of the toppings might take you by surprise:
"I researched the market and found that seaweed was an interesting new ingredient being used in artisan bread. So we used that as a way of reducing the salt level. The sodium content of seaweed is about 3.5 percent compared to 40 percent in salt. There's iodine in there, vitamin B12, all sorts of things. And the flavour is excellent as well."
Elsewhere, the tomato sauce contains extra red pepper for a boost of vitamin C, and each pizza features extra magnesium, potassium, folates and vitamin A. All told, each pizza contains the exact proportions of calories, proteins, fat, carbohydrate and nutrients to make it a single, meal-sized way to obtain 30 percent of your recommended daily intake. Talking on BBC Radio 4's Today program this morning, Lean explained that it could be eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner with not a single negative health effect.
There's obviously one big question here, though: how does it taste? Lean reassured listeners of Radio 4 that 100 taste testers said it was as good or better than other frozen pizzas available on the market. Still, some people won't have long to wait long before they find out for themselves: they go on sale in UK supermarkets later this year. At launch there will be a standard margherita and a venison-topped version, with more toppings to be announced. [BBC]
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